Need help with entry foundation plants

15 years ago

Hi, there. We are relandscaping our house and had hired a landscape designer to draw up a plan that we are implementing ourselves. However, one of the foundation plants she chose is super slow growing and I really wanted to substitute something else there and was looking for suggestions.

The design has plum yew fastigiata on either side of the steps and another one on the right corner of the garage. The yews are underplanted with candytuft. Then the far left front of the house has two slightly staggered rows of snow white indian hawthorne. In front of the indian hawthornes is an area to plant annuals (or whatever I want). There is also a very small curved bed (if you want to call it that) where the walkway meets the driveway that is to have 3 stepping stones and candytuft. Anyway, I can only find 2 foot yews and they are so slow-growing that I really want to find a replacement.

I was originally thinking about other conifers, but most of them seem to either get too big or I cannot find locally. I will attach a clickable thumblink of the front of the house (sorry the right side of the garage is cut off).

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Comments (5)

frangione1
Original Author
15 years ago
Sorry, I forgot to mention that the front of the house gets an east/southeast exposure, so gets a good 6 hours of sun and then gets shade later in the afternoon.
rhodium
15 years ago
Just give the Yews some time... believe me it will pass fast enough. The pointy yews will be a change from your current foundation plantings.

If you're impatient for size, then buy larger Yews. Go to a contractors nursery, not HD or WM, they will have the sizes and quality you need.
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I'd do a bit of a mix. A couple of taller, narrow selections (Buxus 'Graham Blandy', Ilex crenata 'Sky Pencil' or Euonymus 'Green Spire') would add some height, and are both shade and drought tolerant. Fill in with something lower - sweet box or Sarcococca humilis is a great choice. A low evergreen, slowly spreading groundcover that offers intensely fragrant tiny white flowers in winter and thrives in dry shade (an eastern or northern exposure). An excellent and very welcoming plant to have by a front door. Add seasonal color splashes with pansies or impatiens. Remember drought tolerant doesn't mean no water, specially right after planting :-) These are plants that once established are able to survive with minimal rainfall.
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You are working backwards in that you are choosing plants and then trying to figure out what you want them to do. Now you have a tough task at trying to make reason out of some very contrasting forms, color, and texture. You also can not overlook the house as being part of the compostion, or just as importantly, the planting being part of the house's composition. The simpler the elements are, the less you have to overcome to make a composition work. If you are new to this, you might do well to simplify. I see the most difficult thing to overcome with this plant selection is form. You have a very unrefined look of a butterfly bush, a very abstract form in the weeping norway spruce, very tight simple forms in the boxwood varieties, reed grass, hydrangea, ....(I'm hoping that we ae not talking about one of each). What is going to hold this composition together? It has to be a very strong combination of unifying elements to pull such a hodge-podge off. It can be done, but it is not something that a bit of internet advice is going to solve. It is a very big challenge. I would recommend starting with a base planting that starts the composition off with strong unity that will allow you to add the funk without breaking apart the composition. You obviously like contrast, but you have to understand that when you see it working well, there is always a unifying element that lets it succeed. Often it is overlooked by the observer because the power of contrast gets the attention while unity quietly works its magic. That probably makes no sense to anyone reading it, but it is the way I see it, for what it is worth.
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Paula, I vote for encouraging all perennials and flower garden people, especially those who arrange them so well in nice big groups instead of polka dots. Maybe you prefer looking out over the big expanse of lawn, but If this were my porch, I would get the height you want by adding one or two of some taller shrubs on the outside of your sweeping sidewalk in order to give a bit more enclosure to the porch. I'm in your zone & I might choose one of the bigger viburnums because of their flowers/berries/& good structure. Or the smaller lilacs? I might even put a low hedge on the outer side of that, creating an enclosure for even more big groups of perennials. Me, I would use the late season fragrant hosta massed inside box, probably, or even dwarf spirea, which is way cheaper & I think looks almost as good in winter. I understand such isn't the current standard in landscape design, which I also like, and it wouldn't be appropriate for someone who doesn't like flowers or gardening, but I'm wholeheartedly in favor of those who have some garden personality flashing it ! Sam
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enailes
15 years ago
You could always take the curved bed around the walkway and join to the other bed, creating one bed. There are loads of dwarf conifers you could use in your plan and I think a dwarf Japanese Maple would look nice too with your house colors if you're looking for other ideas.
laag
15 years ago
If the designer has a solid coposition, I would suggest that you ask her for an alternative plant for the reasons that you gave. She is more intimate with the entire composition than any of us will be from a description and is in a better position to make changes that work as an entire composition.

I know that when I am asked to change out a plant for whatever reason, it is not uncommon for me to change to a plant much different than the originally proposed plant. The important thing to me is that the entire composition works and I would expect that of your designer as well.

The funny thing to me is that the last two times I had someone want to change out a plant, it has been a columnar yew (Veridis Yew). It seems that the males in the house tend to be uncomfortable with the form. Depending on the comfort level of the males in your house, it may be a good thing to ask for a plant with a different form right off the bat.

Veridis Yew is a readily available columnar form yew that I can easily find at 4' high. You might consider it as an alternative.

Thirty years ago, my father told me not to use upright rocks in gardens for elderly clients and not to use columnar shrubs for guys that seem obsessed with a macho image. His stubborn son has had to knock over upright rocks once (seems I learned that one) and removed columnar plants twice (for the president of an NFL team from outside my area) and just last week (although the landscaper may have been behind that as he was the one who had to replace the shrub that the NFL guy did not want).
prairiepaintbrush
15 years ago
Hahaha! Try Will Fleming yaupon. They get about 15 ft. tall and 3 ft. wide. Perfect for the NFL.

Need help with entry foundation plants

Comments (5)

frangione1
Original Author

rhodium

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laag

prairiepaintbrush

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Need help with entry foundation plants

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frangione1Original Author

rhodium

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laag

prairiepaintbrush

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frangione1
Original Author